With utter fascination last Wednesday night Nov. 20th, I watched one of my favorite PBS shows, NOVA. The title of the show was The Violence Paradox. The one hour show investigated how over the last 200,000 years Homo sapiens as a whole are living and dying less violently. In other words, comparatively speaking in the 21st century by the compiled numbers most human beings are living and dying more peacefully than in our past.
In his two published books The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) and its sequel Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018), cognitive psychologist, linguist, and Harvard Professor Steven A. Pinker states on the show:
We’ve done something right. Let’s figure out what it is and keep doing it. The reality is that we may be living in one of the most peaceful eras in human existence. Violence has been in decline, but that just doesn’t count as news. You just never see a journalist saying, “I’m reporting live, from a country that’s at peace,” or “a school that hasn’t been shot up.” Once I stumbled upon this graph, I mentioned it in a blog post, and then I received correspondence from scholars in a variety of fields, telling me that I could’ve made an even stronger case. I saw data-set after data-set, all of which showed declines in violence, in different parts of the world, with different kinds of violence. And I realized there was a story that needed to be told.
However, Pinker wants to be clear about the explicit and implicit meaning of his findings so as not to be painted as a deluded optimist.
To point out that things were worse in the past is not to say we should relax, our problems are all solved, quite the contrary. It’s by understanding how our predecessors were able to drive down rates of violence that we can be emboldened to try to drive them down even further.
And this is where I was personally intrigued! How. How has this downward trend of violence, on the global scale, been achieved? What various factors and events have contributed to humanity’s gradual increase to more peaceful existences with each other?
I found the entire 1-hour 53-minute documentary to be powerful and yes, hopeful with tangible solutions and methods offered and that are in fact tried and tested for success, offering more reasons to keep this peaceful trend rising. What I found especially intriguing from the scientific and statistical findings was of the many factors scientists have connected to violence or peace, seven modern societal conditions and their related sub-conditions which guided humans either toward, hate, prejudice, and violence, or on a path of peace, collaboration, and prosperity. They were:
- Government or State — the rule of law kept better peace
- The Civilizing Process — economic order went hand in hand with social norms and manners, etiquette, self-control, etc.
- Equality — learning about others with the same experiences (with empathy below)
- Literacy — not just reading, but how much could be read about from a diverse continent or around our diverse world (e.g. Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
- Empathy — feeling deeply about someone else’s plight and/or prosperity (linked with equality)
- Biggest World Powers — the top major powers/armies are not fighting, at the moment
- Testosterone Levels — today violence is no longer an effective tool to get something done or achieve conquest as it was before. Non-violent movements are 2-3 times as successful as violent movements
However, without these seven conditions above or just two to four of them or one or more in fragile existence, the whole of a civilization could collapse, returning it/us right back to Medieval societal hardships when one ruler or small group of “Lords” could easily become sadistic tyrants willing, forcing their subordinates into heinous acts or genocide. From the show:
NARRATOR: At SWPS University, in Poland, Tomasz Grzyb and Dariusz Doliński are revisiting a famous experiment first conducted in the 1960s by the American psychologist Stanley Milgram. In the aftermath of the holocaust, Milgram wanted to understand how seemingly good people could follow terrible orders.
Just as Milgram did, the experiment starts by setting up a fake study.
TOMASZ GRZYB (SWPS University): There are two participants, and there is a guy who presents himself as a professor of psychology, and he says that, “Well, you are a participant in an experiment which is devoted to find out how memory’s working.”
NARRATOR: Grzyb is masquerading as a participant, the so-called “learner.” The other participant is the “teacher.” Grzyb pretends to memorize sets of letters, but his responses are scripted. The teacher is told that the student is hooked up to the machine, and they must administer a shock, if he answers incorrectly.
Because the experiment is highly stressful for the real subject, the so-called teacher, it’s controversial. So, it will be stopped at 150 volts, the 10th switch on the panel, which, if real, would be an extremely painful shock.
Will anyone go so high?
This experiment showed that with a powerful authority figure or figures ordering the “teacher” to commit this violence—by fear, coercion, or perhaps blackmail—of the 220 participants, about 90% of them obeyed the orders. Many of us think we would never commit such heinous crimes on another, a baby, child, or adult, but this test and others like it suggest otherwise. Similar to the soldiers of Genghis Khan or the Nazi SS of World War II, all of us have the capacity to commit heinous acts given our personal circumstances and surroundings. Peace and non-violence are not a forgone conclusion.
There were two other fascinating facts the show presented: 1) the Availability Heuristic, and 2) strong Gun Regulations, particularly on assault weapons, cut in half or more, crimes of homicide and mass killings.
Availability heuristic says that a diet of news stories will fool us into thinking that violence is much more prevalent than it really is. This is very much the case with social-media bombardments of a specific (viral?) topic. On the contrary, this very narrow propaganda or sensationalism (for revenues) does not factually represent the overall global or continental trends.
Gun regulations that are widespread and strong, e.g. in 1996 Australia, contribute to significant reductions in suicide, homicide, and mass-killing rates according to these studies, click here.
Finally, an international program called Cure Violence, ranked #9 in top 500 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) in the world, stops the spread of violence by using the methods associated with disease control. And cities around the world have turned to Cure Violence to prevent violence—from the United States to Latin America to the Middle East. One method utilized in Iraq (based upon Contact Theory) is through a football/soccer league where teams must have players of various ethnicities, religious beliefs, and/or social classes, even if historically opposed, in order to enroll and play the season. In football/soccer their are no national, ethnic or religious boundaries. Players and their families are also encouraged to socialize off the soccer pitch in restaurants and home-gatherings. The soccer league and additional off-field activities have been a huge success! How about that Ark! 😉
If you ever have the chance to watch this outstanding documentary, The Violence Paradox by PBS NOVA, I highly recommend you do it! It is well worth 2-hours of your time and undivided attention. Most of all, it shows us clearly how to understand our lesser nature for violence, but more importantly it gives us proven solutions and methods of stopping the spread of the violence disease and it becoming a repetitive epidemic.
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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always
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The Professor's Convatorium 
Strange that the facts (reality) say one thing, but because of media flooding us with negative stories we *believe* the opposite.
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Indeed John. You’d think that after the well-known propaganda machines of Joseph Goebbels (Nazis of WW2) or that between the People’s Republic of China, the Soviet Union vs. the U.S. during the Cold War Era that Americans would be able to decipher propaganda bombardment versus actual facts/data-sets. But alas, we are still very much gullible and/or oblivious to these powerful machines, every election year especially. 😔
Hence, it is also obvious for the last century that our American primary and secondary education systems—in particular the Charter and Private institutions!—are NOT teaching proper critical-analysis, comparing/contrasting, testing, etc, etc, except perhaps in the advance sciences at public institutions.
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I was over at Watchtower and he’s telling me because of sodomites and evil that the world is overdue for gods wrath, yet a few paragraphs later he mentions this fact that life spans are longer and murder is down. At record lows worldwide. Coincidentally we are the most secular we’ve ever been. Weird
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Watchtower? I vaguely remember that word in a blog-title somewhere, but precisely who/where it is escapes me. Assistance please. 🙂
Life-spans are indeed a bit longer now around the world, but not at all with white/caucasian males and females in the U.S. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has found that our life-spans are DROPPING! 😮
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/one-nation-under-stress
I don’t find it a coincidence at all, yet, I’m sure you were employing the wonderful literary device of sarcasm/satire, yes? 😉 This NOVA documentary pointed out the ONLY relevant part “religions” have played in rising peace, non-violence, and much improved medicine/healthcare. It was this: 2 of the 3 Abrahamic religions are in significant decline! Hence, allowing for a more secular, scientific, and most importantly… HUMANE/humanistic world and life model. 🙂
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Phillip Augustine is part of watchtower. I’m sure that rings a bell. He’s been pretty absent lately as he is in divinity school brushing up on his excuses.
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It also shows their preoccupation with sex, but handwave violence as a lesser evil
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Oh yeah! Now I remember him. Pretty polite when it comes to Christian apologists; I liked him. He and I dialogued and debated quite a bit on my 2018 Saul the Apostate series. Well, not the entire 5-parts, strange enough, but only Part II that he was highly focused on (obsessed with?) rather than the whole of the subject. He was indeed interested in pulling my Commentors over onto that “team” blog (multiple contributors) All Along the Watchtower. Oddly he has not returned here since. 🤔
I had forgotten about him and that blog. Might have to pop over and see what trouble I can find. 😈 😛
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Agreed. Sex—whether hetero or homosexual sex—and the long, LONG history of suppressing women’s equality… to mention only TWO horrible, long-standing traditions. (facepalm) 😠
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Even today. “It’s an R rated movie, but it’s only violence. There’s no sex in it so it’s pretty chill”
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That was a posted comment on the blog?
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No, just a comment I used to hear in my religious circles.
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Yes, the brush-offs of highly controversial topics, particularly the ones inside their Canonical Bibles—that today will/can NEVER be removed, much less by doing so would admit that their “Almighty God” by default is in fact fallible with poor foresight/forethought of these modern problems and fallacies—show the initial hints that their House of Cards (religion, belief system) is quite shaky and has holes throughout worse than Swiss cheese. 😉
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Excellent review of the show, Professor. I watched it last night. I have my doubts about the base statistics used to determine the acts of violence. To claim that we humans are less violent than our ancestors, in the face of so much violence is, indeed, a paradox.
As an avid reader from a young age and an author, I found the bit about literacy–the influence of novels on building empathy–of special interest.
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Good point Rosaliene regarding the “base statistics.” I know that gathering those instances, cases, numbers, etc, would have become more and more difficult as one returned further and further into history. To say it was all a very complex compilation and number-crunching endeavor would be a GROSS understatement. 😄 That said, I was thoroughly impressed with the efforts! In particular the part about using 239-years of documented court proceedings encompassing 197,745 different trials. From the transcript:
DeDeo utilized a 19th-century Roget’s Thesaurus for the 127-million words in those documented trials. In earlier proceedings violent words didn’t necessarily fit the charged crime. However, by the late 1800’s and later, violent words correlated with violent crimes…
The show went on to differentiate the numbers slaughtered versus the world population at the time. This metric offers a broader picture of our species violent behavior. The transcript continues…
These data-sets may or may not be 95% factually representative or wholly 100%, however, the sheer effort these scientists and Pinker have put forth in trying to better understand HOW human violence, homicide, massacres, and genocides are on a global scale on the wane is noble indeed! I think it should continue and continue to be more and more accurate and factual. 🙂
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Yes, it is an outstanding documentary and this post is pretty darn good too. As noted above, we need to focus on the evidence presented and not jump to broad conclusions. Violence has declined over the long-term (i.e. since the advent of civilization), but that doesn’t mean we humans are now peaceful nor does it mean violence won’t increase again. In fact, the documentary identified a correlation between social inequalities and violence; and, inequality has been rising quite dramatically in recent decades. Furthermore, the societal stresses resulting from climate change and political radicalization are likely to trigger increasing incidents of violence.
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Hear HEAR Robert! Couldn’t agree more! Yes, the show and Steven Pinker did indeed stress that horrible atrocities by humans, individually or as a group/nation, can in fact return us to those brutal, lethal Paleolithic Age skirmishes and battles as well as plummet us back into Medieval Age norms and tolerance of inhumane acts unless we are vigilant in keeping the progress forward then PROTECTING it and the non-violent conflict-resolution methods so we humans DO NOT devolve back toward impulsive, irrational barbarians!
Wonderful comment Sir, thank you. 🙂
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I think the more we try to curb violence, the more violent this generation is becoming. The more they want everything politically correct and Utopian, the more the step on Freedom of speech, etc.
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